FIFA has announced the three finalists for its world player of the year award, the Ballon d’Or.

OK, scratch that. Here’s the news in a nutshell:

FIFA has revealed that Andres Iniesta of Barcelona will be selected as the third-best player on the planet for 2012.

Oops. Was that a bit harsh? Surely a player as gifted and productive as Iniesta, who might have been a worthy winner in another era, shouldn’t be relegated so quickly to also-worth-mentioning status.

But what are you going to do when you have two players who have dominated the sport like Lionel Messi, Iniesta’s teammate at Barcelona, and Cristiano Ronaldo of Real Madrid?

“Messi and Ronaldo are really the only ones with a chance of winning; that’s how it’s been recently,” said former Brazil scoring star Ronaldo (no relation to Cristiano) at Thursday’s announcement in Sao Paulo.

Messi, who could claim his fourth consecutive Ballon d’Or award, is joined only by Brazil’s Ronaldo and France’s Zinedine Zidane in the three-time winners’ club. There’s some sentiment that Real Madrid’s Ronaldo, the 2008 winner, could end Messi’s streak after a 2011-12 season in which he led Madrid to the Spanish championship while scoring 46 league goals.

In truth, Messi vs. Ronaldo is not even the most interesting two-man race in soccer at the moment. It’s been overtaken by Messi vs. Müller.

With two goals Saturday in a 5-1 win over Athletic Bilbao, Messi raised his goal output for the calendar year to an other-worldly 84 — one shy of the global record set in 1972 by Gerd Müller of Bayern Munich and West Germany. After four straight two-goal games over the last 21/2 weeks, Messi can pass Müller on Wednesday if he keeps the run going against Benfica in the European Champions League. If he comes up short, he’ll still have five more cracks at the mark before the year runs out.

And once Messi’s race with history is won, his race with Ronaldo will be history.

Think back to this year’s American League MVP voting. In a year when the Tigers’ Miguel Cabrera became the first Triple Crown winner since 1967, some observers argued that the Angels’ Mike Trout had actually enjoyed a better year statistically. They may have even been right. But the voters gave 22 of 28 first-place votes to Cabrera, who won going away.

Ronaldo is looking a lot like Mike Trout. The national team coaches and captains and select journalists who vote for the Ballon d’Or can no more overlook the all-time world scoring mark than MVP voters could look beyond Cabrera’s Triple Crown.

On Tuesday, Ronaldo scored his 63rd goal of the calendar year in Real Madrid’s 4-1 Champions League win over Ajax. That’s a lot of goals — yet he’s still 21 behind Messi.

Ronaldo’s biggest selling point is the league championship he earned last spring. He and Real Madrid also beat Barcelona in the preseason Spanish Supercup, pitting the league winners against the domestic cup champions. And in between, Ronaldo led Portugal to the European Championship semifinals, scoring both goals in a 2-1 quarterfinal win over the Netherlands.

Messi and Argentina did not have a showcase event like the Euros in 2012. But after struggling for so long to make an impact with the national team, he tied a record in 2012 with 12 goals for Argentina, which leads South America’s World Cup qualifying race just past the halfway mark.

After scoring a La Liga-record 50 goals last season, Messi is on pace to total 57 in 2012-13 — 11/2 goals per game. He has led Barcelona to the best 14-game start in the history of the Spanish league — 13-0-1, the lone blemish coming against Ronaldo and Real Madrid.

Beginning with that 2-2 draw on Oct. 7, in which Messi and Ronaldo scored all the goals, Messi has been nothing less than extraordinary: 14 games in all competitions, 21 goals and nine multi-goal games, including a hat trick.

“Messi is the best ever,” says Iniesta, destined to finish third when the Ballon d’Or winner is announced Jan. 7 in Zurich.

Better than Müller in 1972? That’s a Ruth-vs.-Maris debate best left for another day. But if we’re talking Messi vs. Ronaldo in 2012, it’s really quite simple. Just do the math.

Star, club squabble

The global players’ union calls it “blackmail.” His coach says it’s his choice alone to keep Wesley Sneijder out of the squad.

More and more, it looks as if Sneijder has played his last game for Inter Milan.

Inter caused a stir last month when club director Marco Branca said Sneijder wouldn’t play again until he made a decision about his future with a new deal reportedly requiring him to take a pay cut.

“Then today the same person tells me that the squad is chosen by the coach, regardless of the current situation,” Sneijder told Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf on Monday after leaving a meeting with club executives.

Sneijder, long linked with a move to England’s Premier League, has two years remaining on his current deal. The 28-year-old is Inter’s best-paid player with an annual salary of about $7.8 million.

Last week, FIFPro highlighted Sneijder’s recent exclusion and called for talks about clubs using “blackmail behavior” to force players into signing new contracts. But coach Andrea Stramaccioni said he made the call on Sneijder. “You can be sure that there is no [blackmail] case,” he said.

Briefly …

Dallas Cup update: Club America of Mexico is the latest addition to the Gordon Jago Super Group for next spring’s Dr Pepper Dallas Cup youth tournament. The Mexico City club will make its first Dallas Cup appearance in 13 years, joining a lineup that includes Fulham (England), Fluminense (Brazil), Coritiba (Brazil), Eintracht Frankfurt (Germany) Aalborg BK (Denmark) and Tigres UANL (Mexico).

MLS moves: Former FCD midfielder/forward Atiba Harris was traded from Vancouver to Colorado on Monday for an international roster spot in the 2015 and ’16 MLS seasons. … Former U.S. national team and D.C. United forward Josh Wolff, 35, has retired as a player and will be a full-time assistant coach with the club.

The week past

European Champions League: at Olympiacos 2, Arsenal 1 — Having slumped to 10th place in the English Premier League, Arsenal had a chance to break a four-game winless streak and finish atop Group B before letting a halftime lead slip away Tuesday in Athens. The Gunners still qualified for the knockout stages but as the second-place team to Schalke, which means Arsenal will face a group champion when the round of 16 begins Feb. 12. The draw is Dec. 20.

English Premier League: at Queens Park Rangers 1, Aston Villa 1 — QPR was minutes from a famous victory at Manchester City to end last season, only for City to score twice in stoppage time and claim the Premier League title. More than six months and a coaching change later, QPR is still finding ways to not win games. Saturday’s draw in Harry Redknapp’s Loftus Road debut made it 15 straight games to start the season without a victory, equaling the record set by Swindon in 1993-94. Coming off draws against two of the other bottom four teams, last-place Rangers (0-9-6) will hope to break the spell Saturday at 16th-place Wigan.

The week ahead

FIFA Club World Cup (Thursday-Dec. 16) — Monterrey, representing North America, is one of seven continental champions that will be competing in the Japanese cities of Toyota City and Yokohama. (Love it that the first game at Toyota will feature Hyundai, of Ulsan, South Korea.) The tournament favorites are, as always, the champions of Europe and South America — England’s Chelsea and Brazil’s Corinthians — but they won’t start play for another week. European clubs have won the last five titles.

English Premier League: Manchester United at Manchester City (Sunday) — The league’s top two teams last season are the top two again heading into their first meeting of the season. City, which swept its local rivals last season en route to its first league championship in 44 years, trails United by three points atop the league standings. No other club is within nine points of the lead. Last year’s derby at United produced only one goal, but expect a lot more scoring Sunday. United leads the league in goals with 37 in 15 matches but has conceded 21 — only six fewer than last-place Queens Park Rangers. City is tied with Tottenham for second in goals scored with 28. United’s Robin van Persie is tied for the league lead with 10 goals.

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